


Left Out In The Cold

by themayqueen



Series: Troubled Hearted Kind [2]
Category: Hanson (Band)
Genre: Extramarital Affairs, F/M, Future, Post-Divorce, Reconciliation, Reunions, Teaching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 18:33:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5466839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themayqueen/pseuds/themayqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten years later, a ghost from her past comes to visit Natalie in her new life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Left Out In The Cold

Now that it’s officially Christmas break, the only sound left in Natalie’s classroom is the comforting sound of the eraser removing the last traces of the semester’s work. The school she’s worked at for the last six years, since finishing her degree in elementary education, still has the old fashioned chalkboards that she didn’t think even existed anymore. They’re a little whimsical, perfect for the little doodles and drawings that often accompany the lessons she gives her kindergartners. 

It took her a while to stop moping around and get her life together, but eventually, Natalie had found her way in life. She had become her own person, a person she’s proud to be. A person who doesn’t need to rely on anyone but herself. 

Taylor’s child support payments come through every month like clockwork, the most reliable thing he’s done in the entire time Natalie has known him. They exchange phone calls and emails when something important happens with one of the kids, and he’s even stopped by for a few birthdays, when he can get away without the rest of the family finding out. Natalie is aware, without him saying it, that they will never understand why she had left. Taylor, surprisingly, does, even if he has never discovered the entire truth. They have still reached a strange sort of understanding in their decade apart.

She hasn’t seen or spoken to Zac or Kate since the day she left. 

It’s better that way, Natalie tells herself. It’s easier if she cut all ties—easier for her to survive and easier for him to perhaps mend his own marriage. Hers had been beyond repair since it started, but she held out hope that Zac’s wasn’t. Taylor never says much about Zac or Kate, and Natalie doesn’t dare ask.

The sound of shuffling footsteps down the hall joins the chorus with Natalie’s eraser, the sound growing closer and closer and finally stopping right outside her open door.

“Ms. Bryant?” 

She knows that voice. It’s older, perhaps, with a rasp to it that she doesn’t recognize, but she knows that voice. Still, turning around to face him will make it real, and she doesn’t want it to be real.

“Natalie.”

Even after ten years, she’s too weak to resist the way he says her name. She lets the eraser fall to the floor and turns around slowly, like she doesn’t know what or who will be there when she does.

It’s just Zac, though. But that isn’t true. He’ll never be _just_ Zac. 

His hair is long again, pulled back in a ponytail with a few strands, flecked with gray, hanging loose. A red plaid scarf is wrapped tightly around his neck as protection against the unusually cold weather in Georgia this Christmas. His cheeks are bright pink, and she’s not sure if that’s from the cold or from the same sort of emotions she’s feelings right now.

“What are you… how did you find me?” She breathes out.

“It wasn’t difficult,” he replies. “Well, it was. Taylor refused to tell me, and nobody else knew. Finally it dawned on me—just commit a little federal offense and read my brother’s mail. I found one of the checks he was sending you. I could have found you years ago if I’d been smarter, and it isn’t like you vanished off the face of the earth, anyway.”

“I tried to,” Natalie replies weakly.

“But you didn’t,” Zac says, taking a few steps into the room. 

Natalie just barely resists the urge to back away from him. “What do you want? Why find me now?”

“I don’t know.” Zac shrugs. “I mean, I don’t know why now. Why _not_ now? No time would have been soon enough. As for what I want… I think you know that. I think you always knew that.”

Natalie nods, because she does. She knew, even before Zac knew perhaps, that he had fallen for her. What she never wanted him to know was that she had fallen, too. 

“She was pregnant, you know,” Zac says. “Kate, I mean. When you left, we had… she had just found out she was pregnant. I wanted to tell you, but I walked in and you were packing to leave.”

Natalie nods again, because she does vaguely recall Taylor mentioning Zac’s third child. She’s made a concerted effort to avoid any possible news or gossip about the band, though. She didn’t want to know.

“It wasn’t mine,” Zac continues. “I did the math when she told me, and I knew. The timing was off; we hadn’t slept together recently enough. It couldn’t be mine. But I was faithful, believe it or not. I stuck by her through the whole pregnancy and all the way until after his second birthday, just waiting for her guilty conscience to get the best of her.”

“Did it?” Natalie asks.

Zac nods. “Finally. But I don’t think it would have if I hadn’t picked up her phone and seen a text from some guy I didn’t know. It was an accident; I wasn’t snooping or anything. I’d be a hypocrite if I did, and maybe that’s why I stayed with her for so long, because I felt like I deserved that after… after everything with you.”

“You didn’t,” Natalie replies, taking a few steps toward him. “You didn’t deserve that at all.”

Zac cracks the tiniest of smiles. “Somebody once told me we don’t always get what we deserve.”

“Sounds like a pretty smart person,” Natalie says.

“She can be,” Zac replies, closing the distance between them and running his fingers through her hair. “But I think it’s also true that sometimes we think we _don’t_ deserve things that would actually be really, really good for us. And we run from those things.”

“I thought I was doing you a favor,” Natalie replies weakly. Zac’s touch makes her feel more like a teenager than the nearly forty year old woman she actually is. 

“I can appreciate that,” Zac says. “I really can. It took me a long time, but I’m not bitter about it anymore. Any of it. I guess maybe that’s why it took me so long to come find you, though. I had to come to terms with all of it and understand that you really thought you were doing what was best. And maybe it would have been, if Kate hadn’t done what she had done. But you didn’t know about that.”

Natalie shakes her head. “No, I didn’t. I swear I didn’t. I haven’t spoken to her at all.”

“I know,” Zac replies. “I believe you. I know you two had already drifted apart even before you left.”

“Mostly because of my guilty conscience,” Natalie admits, looking down. “I mean, how could I go on being her best friend when I was sleeping with her husband?”

“And how could I go on being her husband when both of us had slept with other people?” 

Natalie glances up slowly, and realizes he really isn’t wearing his ring around his neck like he always used to do. She realizes, perhaps a bit slower than she would care to admit, that he’s been trying to tell her he’s single now, too. He’s trying to tell her there’s nothing standing in their way now. 

Isn’t there? Natalie racks her brain, but she can’t truly think of any reason why they can’t be together now, even though a part of her still wants to fight it.

“This is our time, Nat,” Zac says, his voice barely above a whisper. He cups her face in his hands and stares into her eyes in that way he has that always made her weak in the knees. “This is it. There’s nothing standing in our way now. Finally.”

She shakes her head, because she knows protesting is the right thing to do. She doesn’t mean it, but she does it anyway. Before she can formulate any sort of spoken response, some rebuttal of Zac’s proposal, his lips crash into hers. They feel exactly like she remembers. He backs her up until she bumps into her desk, and that’s it, she’s done. She can’t refuse him. She never could, even if she has spent the last ten years practicing.

Finally, Zac pulls away, leaving Natalie breathless. He stares at her, and she knows he wants her to say something, but she has no words at all.

“Come on,” he whispers. “At least let me take you out to dinner tonight. That’s all. Just dinner. Come on, it’s Christmas.”

“It isn’t Christmas yet,” Natalie replies, hating that her face is betraying her with a smile. “And that’s a horrible reason to let you take me out to dinner. But… okay.”

Zac gives her a big grin, and she wants to tell him to wipe it off, that he hasn’t won this war yet. But he has won the first battle; Natalie can’t deny that. Maybe he’s right, she decides. Maybe it’s unorthodox and maybe it should have never happened, but maybe… just maybe… this really is their time.


End file.
